28 Days Later: A look at some reviews from 2007

I posted this in WinInfo Short Takes just now, but thought it would be of interest here as well...

Product of the Year:
Nintendo Wii

This one is hilarious and it needs to be mentioned first for
two reasons: One, it was actually released in 2006, not 2007, though only a
lucky handful of people were able to get their hands on it last year. (Come to
think of it, that was true of the Wii this year as well.) Two, I never actually
reviewed the Wii: I was so underwhelmed by Nintendo's latest video game console
when I got one in November 2006 that I figured the most polite thing I could do
was just not review it and save everyone some heartache. That said, I did finally
summarize my thoughts about the Wii in an April article artfully titled "Choosing
a Video Game System." I know, that's why I get paid the big bucks.

In this article, I described the "kiddie" Wii in
condescending terms and basically advised everyone in the free world to look elsewhere
for video game entertainment. And sure enough, the world responded to my well-intentioned
advice by buying the Wii in record numbers. The device was literally sold-out
for all of 2007 and is now the best-selling current-generation video game console.
Game makers, which ignored the Wii to their detriment in 2006, spent most of
2007 racing to move people off of Sony PS3 games and onto the Wii.

So here's the thing. I still think the Wii is a joke. And
no, I don't want to hear from you if you love it. The numbers make obvious the
fact that the Wii is very popular. But I'd just like to point out that the Ford
Escort was once the bestselling car in the world as well. I'm sure there's a
parallel there somewhere. (Hint for the automobile-disinclined: The Escort was never
a particularly nice or expensive vehicle.)

In the end, I offer a virtual toast to Nintendo, because
their success with the Wii is all the more dramatic when you consider what a
piece of absolute junk it is: You have fooled millions of people into buying an
underpowered one-trick pony and will reap the rewards for years to come. Maybe
you'll even make enough money to fund a real video game console next time
around. We can only hope.

The Operating Systems
that No One Wanted: Vista and Leopard

Pity poor Microsoft and, to a much lesser extent, Apple. The
companies both shipped absolutely stellar operating systems in 2007. The problem
is that both systems, Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard,"
respectively, are updates to systems that have been on the market for years and
are already usable, reliable, secure, and hugely compatible with devices and
software. Both landed with an almost audible thud, though of course both
companies spent a lot of money on PR throughout the year to pretend otherwise.
Vista, we were told, had sold 88 million licenses by October, while Leopard
reportedly got off to the fastest start of any OS X version, selling 2 million
copies in its first weekend on the market.

Neat. But the truth is so much more modest than either
Microsoft or Apple is willing to admit. Users complained of problems with both
systems, of compatibility and performance issues. Neither system appears to offer
many major new features, though Vista at least comes with a dramatic new
component-based architecture. Leopard, though solid, is just uninspiring, and
it even makes some aspects of the system worse than its predecessor. (What's up
with the flat blue folders? Yikes.)

Obviously, both Vista and Leopard will become the mainstream
systems in their respective markets over time. But I think what sunk these
products was that their predecessors were on the market so long they became
overly familiar. While people like you and I are always clamoring for change and
wondering aloud about the many delays, the truth is, the general populace just
doesn't care. And with both Vista and Leopard, Microsoft and Apple committed a
sin that I don't think anyone foresaw: They allowed their mainstream customers
to become complacent with what they had. And because neither Vista nor Leopard
offers any humongous benefits over their predecessors, few saw a reason to
upgrade.

That said, I gave both Vista and Leopard 4 out of 5 stars in
my respective reviews. They're both solid upgrades. It's just that no one seems
to care.

In a year in which high-profile games like Bioshock and Halo
3 got awesome reviews, apparently by people who had never actually played them
for more than 40 minutes, one thing stood out: If you want to fool reviewers
into bumping up their reviews, all you have to focus on is the beginning of the
game. Bioshock is an amazing example of this: If you were to, say, just play
the demo version of the game, you'd be convinced that Bioshock was the most
stunning piece of video game immersion that's ever been created. But if you
actually played the entire game, you'd realize you'd seen everything the game
had to offer in the opening few scenes. The rest is all repetition, and it gets
really monotonous after a while.

But I have a bigger problem with Bioshock. Contrary to all those "Perfect
10" reviews you may have read, Bioshock doesn't know how to tell a story.
The plot is advanced--and, seriously, think about this for a second--by your
onscreen character pressing the Play button on tape recorders that are
conveniently left all over the game. Folks, this isn't innovative or
interesting, it's a failure. And all you need to do is look back three years to
"Half-Life 2," which remains the single best video game of all year,
to understand that it's possible to effectively tell a story and advance a plot
in a video game in a way that is truly immersive. HL-2 remains a much better
game than virtually everything that was released this year, including both
Bioshock and Halo 3.

Coincidentally, HL-2 was also repackaged this year in
something called "The Orange Box," which was released for the Xbox
360, PS3, and PC. The Orange Box also includes last year's Half-Life 2: Episode
One as well as three new games: Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2, and
Portal. That's right, you get five games for the price of one. And while one,
HL-2, is the best game ever made, another of those games is the best game of
the year.

It's called Portal, and it's nothing like any of the other
games in The Orange Box. It's also nothing like any other game I've ever
played. The short version is that it's an innovative puzzle game that is far
more accessible to a wide audience than the shooters that dominate The Orange
Box. But Portal is diabolically funny, ingeniously clever, and just plain fun
to play. It's awesome. And you need it. Now.

Only Microsoft could announce the most expensive warranty
repair program in history--at a cost of over $1 billion, by the way--and get
away with not having to recall the product in question. I'm referencing the
Xbox 360, of course, and if the reports are accurate, between 30 and 35 percent
of the consoles Microsoft made before mid-2007 experienced a catastrophic
hardware failure. The good news? Well, they appear to have finally fixed the
problem. And everyone who purchased an Xbox 360, basically ever, can now get
their consoles fixed for free, no questions asked.

Sadly, the only question we're really asking is how
Microsoft got away with this. I've personally had three major Xbox 360 hardware
failures, and virtually every Xbox 360 owner I know has had at least one. Irony
of the year: Many of these failures occurred in the weeks leading up to the
release of Halo 3. Good stuff.

Apple iPhone

I have a queasy relationship with Apple's hype-heavy iPhone.
I was as caught up as anyone in the excitement over Apple's new sort-of smart
phone in early 2007, and I was eager to see how it held up in real world use
when I picked one up on the day Apple first offered them for sale. And sure
enough, the iPhone is an important product. It's chock-full of amazing
technology, as if some Apple engineer happened to be driving by Area 51 when
the government decided to have a one-time yard sale. It features a multi-touch
user interface, a rotating screen, a full-featured Web browser, email support, a
2 megapixel camera, and iPod functionality. Oh, and apparently you can even
make and receive phone calls.

But here's the thing. For all its whiz-bang functionality,
the iPhone falls apart all over the place when you actually try to use it. The
rotating screen doesn't actually rotate at all, except in a very few
applications, and even then not consistently. The Web browser is ... God, so
third-rate ... Safari, and lacks Flash support. Email support is dodgy, and if
you want to synchronize with Outlook--your only choice on Windows,
incidentally--good luck, because it often doesn't work at all. That camera?
There's no flash. The iPod stuff? Nice, but you can't control it without taking
it out of your pocket, awakening the device, tapping in a password, and then
watching the screen. It's a study in compromise, and I think the thing that's
so disappointing about it is that it promises so much, so your expectations are
that much higher.

The piece de resistance, however, is that the iPhone
requires a data plan, so the base price of this device, after fees and taxes,
is about $70 a month. And that data plan is tied to the most absolutely
horrific wireless network in the US, AT&T's lackluster EDGE. In my own
admittedly unscientific tests, EDGE was less than one-third of the speed of Verizon's
EV-DO network, and that was using an older version of EV-DO when I did the
tests. Yikes.

So what you get for the $2000+ ( $399 plus at least $1680
for two years of AT&T EDGE access) that the iPhone will cost you in the US
is an absolutely stunning compromise. It's the most beautiful phone ever
created. It's also the most frustrating, not that all the reviewers falling all
over each other to praise Apple will ever actually tell you that.

So here's the thing. I use the iPhone every single day.
Despite my expectations that I would simply go back to whatever Windows
Mobile-based device I was using on Verizon, I've stuck it out with the iPhone.
I have not done this solely out of love, though I do like the iPhone quite a
bit. Part of it is that I'm technical enough to overcome the iPhone's
limitations. (For example, I use third party software to overcome the iPhone's
horrible Outlook syncing issues.) Part of it is that I use a lot of Google
services and they've shipped an astonishing collection of iPhone-based
services, most of which are quite nice. Part of it, too, is that Google has
subsequently made Gmail available via IMAP, which makes iPhone-based email
suddenly possible for me. And part of is that Apple has pledged to open up the
iPhone to third party applications in 2008, and I'm willing to stick it out to
see how that works, at least until Google's Android phone platform becomes a
reality and I can make another decision.

The question, of course, is whether the iPhone makes sense
for you. Ultimately, I write my reviews for you, the reader, and not for me,
the tech geek. And I'm still advising against it, unless of course the thought
of tossing over $2000 into the wind doesn't trouble you at all. Certainly, it
will buy you the coolest phone on the market. But I'm sticking by my review, in
which I awarded the iPhone 3 out of 5 stars, because the iPhone is a compromise
between promise and reality, weighted a bit too much on the promise side. That may
change over time. I honestly expect it to, and in Apple's favor. Let's see what
2008 brings.

Finally, I'd like to introduce you to a little pet project
of mine, which involves getting people to read more often. As a life-long
reader and advocate of the activity, I've been astonished at the baloney I've
seen written about the Kindle, Amazon's new e-book reader. I've been using this
wonderful little device every single day since it arrived and it's stunningly
innovative, spelling the beginning of the end of paper-based books, magazines,
and newspapers.

And before you get your panties in a bunch over that
comment--yeah, yeah, I know: Books are the last bastion of analog media--why
don't you actually try a Kindle first? No, it's not perfect: At $399, the
device is far too expensive, for example. But the pros absolutely outweigh the
cons: It's small, lightweight and very portable. The battery life is excellent.
You get free wireless access to Amazon's online store, which has more e-books
and other content than any other similar device, all selling for much less than
their paper-based equivalents. The Kindle is compatible with a small but
high-quality selection of newspapers and magazines. It is, put simply, a
commuter's dream device.

I've now read several e-books on the Kindle, and I've
subscribed to three newspapers, one since dropped. It's replaced my paper-based
subscription to the New York Times, saving me $30 a month. I've yet to fly with
the Kindle, but the thought of having so much available content to choose from,
in such a small device, is just thrilling to me. That I'll be able to buy more
content at any time, from any place, is just amazing.

The Kindle is a deal changer. Too many reviewers are fuming
over non-existent problems (too many buttons) or exaggerating issues (you have
to pay 10 cents to have Amazon wirelessly send you documents from your PC, but
few reviewers note the free version of this service too). And that tells me
they're not giving the Kindle the benefit of the doubt that they were all too
willing to give to products like the iPhone. I guess it matters who made it and
in whose good graces you want to be.

Not for me. The Kindle is amazing. Wait until the price
comes down if you must, but get one.

What most of these products have in common is that my
reviews of them are basically at odds with the reviews you might have read elsewhere.
And that makes me feel wonderful, to be honest. I'm not a lemming, and I don't
expect you to be either. Sometimes you have to look a bit harder to get to the
truth of a thing, and even if you don't agree with all of my assessments here--I'm
looking at you, Nintendo Boy--we can at least agree to disagree. Besides,
you're wrong.